


storms and saints

by NekoAisu



Series: long & lost [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: ((i have no idea what i'm doing but i sure hope ya'll like it)), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Tragedy, Companionable Snark, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Male Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Requited Love, Spoilers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love, Very Possibly OOC Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 12:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: The Warrior of Light, they called him. The one who bathes in aether and crushes gods. The Eikon Slayer.He doesn’t feel like much when the whole of their hope come down on them, all his borrowed power put out like candle flames. He wishes he’d have been smothered as a whole.Estienien does not share the sentiment.





	storms and saints

**Author's Note:**

> please heed the tags!! this contains spoilers and some heavier content in relation to Big Ol' HW Lore!!!
> 
> this is my first work in this fandom, so any pointers ya'll have got would be greatly appreciated!

When the invitation comes, Eorzea’s newest and greatest Warrior of Light is exactly one hundred percent ready to knock out for a week and hope the world doesn’t burn down around him. Tataru laughs when he groans about it, muscles all too happy to keep him bedbound instead of up and about as he  supposedly should be. 

“C’mon, Fahmi,” she cheers, “you need to get up!”

Ears flattened to his head and eyes narrowed, the adventurer very pointedly does not move. He huffs out half a whine when the Lalafell pokes none-too-gently at the newest of blooming bruises along his shoulder before going quiet in full. He breathes, quiet and measured as the singing of the aether resonates in his ears, and tries to reach for the Light that had hollowed out his chest. 

There’s not even a thread left to grasp at and keep close, no scraps left clinging to the edges where he’d been shattered to let it all drain out, and it’s  _ terrifying.  _

He doesn’t want to go to a party under regular circumstances─what with how often him having fun ends in disaster of some persuasion─and the feeling has only intensified the more he puts off facing the inescapable call of political partying. Tataru pats him on the arm, comforting even while cross, and commands, “Go change your clothes, at the least. It doesn’t take a Weaver to know you look like a Morbol’s backside.”

“Rude,” he mumbles. “Doesn’t matter if ‘m not goin’ anywhere. I can stay here ‘n not make a fool of myself.” While knowing that Tataru is  always right, he’s still hesitant. There are holes worn through his boot soles and a tear across the back of his usual robes he’s not sure can be mended. “Can’t spend money on fancy outfits when ‘m still lookin’ for that relic.”

Tataru laughs, jogging from one corner of their base to another, rifling through boxes and flipping through stacks of uniforms like the Fury is on her tail. Fahmi rolls off one of the couches and cracks his back, a truly worrying series of deep pops sounding out as he rotates his torso. Tataru cheers─whether for his apparent willingness to get up and decent or something else, he isn’t sure─and books it from the chest of drawers she’d been picking through back over to her desk. 

“Just you wait, Fahmi! I have just the thing!”

The Miqo’te bites back questions in favor of gathering his travel bag and counting through what Gil he has to spare. He needs a bath, at the least, and food besides. Minifilia had been sure to warn him of the usual fare found at meetings of powers and made it clear he’d best eat before arriving at the Promenade. Tataru decides what happens first with her stern comment of, “Don’t you even  _ think  _ about changing before bathing. We need to make a good impression and-”

“I need to not smell like a bog, yes,” Fahmi laughs. “I’ll be back shortly, then.”

“Be safe,” she calls after him, smiling even after he’s out of sight. After the chaos they’ve gone through as of late, it’s a relief to see him relaxed enough to sleep publicly instead of staying firmly in his learned state of hypervigilance. They all need the break in one way or another, badly timed as it may be, and Tataru prays to any power listening that it will go well. 

The gods turn a blind eye and cover their ears. 

For as impermanent and delicate as mortals tend to be, they ought to learn to keep their heads down and goals grounded. Then, of course, there’s Alphinaud Leveilleur and his champion of all Companies taking fate into their own hands. Where he’d felt the weight of the world, he learns that his beautiful, wonderful Crystal Braves had only been weighed down by coin and degeneracy. 

He cannot blame anyone but himself for the bruise long since bloomed along Fahmi’s cheek, for Yda and Papalymo’s sacrifice in mettle and magic, for Y’shtola and Thancred’s gift of precious minutes for a vital rendezvous. For Minifilia and her boundless trust. He knows they’d rare turn their words on him (and never their weapons) over something like this. They  are were too good to him. It’s only when Fahmi’s hands are holding him─carefully, gently, so much like glass─that he shatters. 

They needs be strong. Indomitable. Infallible. 

But it’s difficult when he knows that it’s his fault there are new dead to be buried, when those hands smooth his hair back and radiate heat back into his bones where he’d been filled with dread like they aren’t ringed with drying blood and lacerated tissue at the wrist, and he takes the time to let his tears fall unhindered. 

When they arrive in Coerthas, the adrenaline that had been pushing him at a fever pitch to  _ run  _ has worn off and left him freezing. Fahmi isn’t much better. He shivers in fits and starts the longer they trudge through the cold until he’s very nearly sure his feet have frozen solid. Then, mercifully, they can see the lights of Camp Dragonhead’s torches. 

Fahmi is quiet, more so than his usual won’t-speak-unless-spoken-to responses, and it shows in his shallow breaths and thousand malm stare. He hikes ever onward until they’re at the gates and being swarmed by knights and chirurgeons. When he stops, it’s like he’s set himself to stone. Even Lord Haurchefant himself can’t get more than half a sound out of him despite being plied with warmed blankets and cocoa. 

He does not recover swiftly. There are wounds even magic cannot heal, no matter how powerful, and it’s more than evident in how Fahmi throws himself from days of sleeplessness to any task he can get his hands on until he’s burnt out. It’s a cycle that hurts deep in the chest of all that knew him before.

Alphinaud prays to Hydaelyn and begs her reconsider the terrible destiny she’s saddled Fahmi with. What he gets is a reply in the fall of a nation prefaced by the death of the one person holding the Warrior of Light together by sheer belief and worshipful love. 

He does not dare ask for anything again. 

Fahmi does not pray. He does not whisper promises, or renounce sins in the way he sees those of Ishgard do at his passing. He’s their savior in so many ways, but he never dreams of demanding tribute. He dreams of warm hands on his, of familiar blue-tone hair softening the harsher angles of a familiar face, and of having opened his mouth to make his feelings known. He dreams of the searing aether that had pulsed along the wound his love had succumbed to and how it had burnt his magic away at every attempt to stem the bleeding. 

He doesn’t dare reach for anything not freely given. Not with the scars turning his hands rough and uneven where he’d tried. The price for wanting was ever one he labored to pay off. 

He feels fake. Hollowed out. There are spaces inside his chest that flicker with something fleeting and ache dully when they fail to stay lit. He wants to break open his ribcage and let his heart pour out along with every overture he’s swallowed down to sit like water in his lungs. He wishes it hadn’t proven to be fatal to all others than him. 

There are few things left to do other than work harder. It’s only after braving mountains and monsters that beat him nearly to the ground that he finds it’s not enough. He sets aside his staff in favor of the sword only to get knocked out so thoroughly he still feels not unlike a trampled rheum a fortnight after the fact. 

He digs deeper, tries harder, and tends to the heat in his chest like it’s a fire to be stoked. It builds to a blaze when he feeds aether into it, frenzied energy given form as light where it fails to stay inside his being. He wishes he could immolate and dissolve to the winds, but there’s always something calling him back. 

It’s terrifying when he realizes what it is tethering him. He doesn’t dare keep it inside, this time, and instead puts it to paper. Once the words begin to flow, he cannot stop them. What began as a single letter becomes a stack of a dozen or so, then extras written on scraps, torn journal pages serving as a record of his weakness. It’s only when he’s staring out at the stars, Estinien quiet where he broods in bed, that he slips. 

“I wish I could disappear.”

“Aye. It’s not too uncommon a feeling,” Estinien replies. “It’s common in soldiers like us.”

Fahmi huffs a laugh. “My apologies. I’m out of sorts today, it seems.” He counts the hours until dawn from where he sits on the sill. It’s not too far off, now. 

Estinien shoots him an indecipherable look before asking, “And what is it that’s got you worrying enough to initiate conversation?”

“Nothing,” Fahmi responds. “Truly. It is just that.” He reaches out his hands, cupping them as if to catch the moonlight, and sighs at his silvered skin. His hair is a mess, having grown out unevenly with how little time he’s had to sit down and hack at it with a knife as of late, and he twists the remnants of an unwound braid between his fingers. 

“You’re lying,” Estinien points out. He’s careful with his words in a way he never usually is and it strikes something deep within Fahmi’s heart he’d been working to strangle. 

The Miqo’te smiles, but it’s a faltering thing. He’s long since run out of easy happiness to put behind it. “Ever think about things you know will happen, but never in your lifetime?” It’s meant as rhetoric, but Estinien very nearly opens his mouth to answer. Fahmi plows on, voice tremulous when he admits, “It’s terrifying to know that someday all I’ve worked for will be turned to dust, that the sun will go nova and take everything with it, and that I’m just-” and he stops with a strangled groan. 

Estinien asks, blunt and intrusive as ever, “You’re just?”

Fahmi opens his mouth. Closes it. Makes a wheezing sound that would be worrying had the Elezen not heard it dozens of times before. He takes a long moment to collect his wits before mumbling, “An idiot.”

“I have it in good confidence that you are far less so than I, at the least,” Estinien jibes. “Truly, is this all that plagues you?”

“I’m in love, too, you know,” Fahmi snaps back, eyes flashing in the low light, “and it’s not-oh. I mean- _ oh Mother Hydaelyn swallow me whole.”  _ He buries his face in his hands and groans. 

Estinien’s eyes cycle through a roulette of emotions all the while he smiles, lopsided and conniving, “And who is this lucky idiot?”

From between Fahmi’s fingers comes an answer, muffled as it is. “You, you unrepentant bastard.” He does not move from his Pose of Shame on the windowsill, but Estinien is fairly sure the confession had caused Fahmi to flush from cheek to chest if his tail and ears are any indication of his mortification with their fluffing and flattening respectively. 

They lapse into silence for the better part of a minute while Fahmi fights to get his emotions under control. Estinien does not push, or spit playful barbs when it’s so clear that even thinking of the possibility of acknowledging the feeling had his friend (partner-in-crime, admirer, ally, and so many more things) nearly ready to throw himself out the window rather than stay perched to look out it. 

It’s only when Estinien has made ready to make a confession of his own that Fahmi removes his hands from his face, pale skin still bright with a blotchy blush when he asks, “Pray tell me to forget, please?”

“I make no habit of lying,” Estinien replies, pushing the myriad quilts he’d been languishing under to the side before swinging his feet over the side of the bed. Fahmi makes a worried sound, torn between staying on his perch with intent to lose himself with wishes of being whisked away with the wind and the fact that the House Fortemps chirurgeons had made it more than clear Estinien was to stay abed as long as possible while recovering. He settles for breathing glimmers of white into the room in hopes any aches would be soothed by a (severely) watered down Medica. “Tell me truly, Fahmi, and I will accept.”

The man in question breathes in like it’s the last breath he’ll have the mercy to take before stating, “I have fought storms and saints, brought gods low and been praised for destroying that which should rightly be immortal, and I would watch the world end many times over if it meant I could offer you that which my heart wishes to give.”

Estinien walks over to the window and opens his arms in the closest thing to inviting he can manage to make his posture. “And what is it that keeps you from doing so, oh Warrior of Light? They cannot touch you here.”

And that is a half-truth Fahmi wants to break to pieces, mouth not open more than half an ilm before Estinien is close enough they very nearly breathe the srame air, calluses sending shivers racing from Fahmi’s head to the tip of his tail at the contact of hands against his cheek. He cannot find a safe place to look, torn between catching Estinien’s fervent gaze and continuing to make up constellations in an an effort to avoid eye contact. 

“I will not without your word,” the Elezen murmurs, uncharacteristically quiet. He watches, hair spilling over his shoulders and catching on his ears with how far down he has to bend to be around equal with Fahmi. It’s not the most comfortable of positions, but it’s made more than worth it when Fahmi finally looks at him and stops worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. 

It feels like the world slows around them in the exact way Aymeric’s favorite romance novels write out first kisses. Estinien vaguely thinks something along the lines of  _ “Eyes should never be this bright-”  _ before Fahmi is entreating him. 

“Please. I have never wanted for anything more.”

When they meet, the spell does not break. They bump noses and it takes a few attempts before they figure out a decent angle, but then it’s  _ perfect  _ and Estinien isn’t sure he’s ever flown so gloriously high as how his heart swoops with elation at the contact. He feels the chapped skin of the Miqo’te’s lips on his and knows he’s not much better. When he pulls back, Fahmi very nearly follows him, hands balling up the fabric of his fleece underclothes to avoid hooking them around Estinien’s neck. Knowing their difference in heights, it’s more for his own benefit than Estinien’s (what with how bad his shoulders have been feeling as of late), but the Elezen had no such reservation when stealing the breath from Fahmi’s lungs. 

“Is this what you want?”

Fahmi laughs and Estinien can feel the vibration where he had pressed himself close, relishing in the contact, “Yes. A million times  _ yes.  _ Is this what  _ you  _ want?”

“I’d be a liar if I said anything but yes.”

For once in his life, Fahmi prays─not to any gods, or higher powers─but to the man holding him like tempered adamantite and spun sugar candy all at once. He shows his reverence in his kisses and how he gives tribute in free-flowing admissions of things long kept secret. Estinien is nothing if not flawed and achingly mortal, but he listens and responds in kind with his own searing brand of devotion. 

It’s only when Fahmi shivers, back pressed to the freezing glass of the window, that they cease their worship. Estinien huffs a laugh. “Are you cold?”

“A bit, yes,” Fahmi answers, sounding mildly dazed. “Halone knows I could do with one of Tataru’s quilts just about now.” He leans in to steal another kiss, cheeks still awash with color (however faded). The sun spills in and catches on his hair, painting it in shades of dark gold like a tarnished halo. To Estinien, he’s never been more divine. 

“Come to bed with me, then.” Fahmi chokes on a breath before Estinien clarifies, “I mean it in the same spirit as our previous travels.”

“You will be the death of me,” the Miqo’te grumbles, “and I’m not even upset over it.”

Estinien nails him with a thoroughly unimpressed look before insinuating, “Well if that’s all it takes to down the infamous Warrior of Light, I do believe this relationship may end with me as a widower.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“And yet you love me for it.”

Fahmi sighs in the best imitation of put-upon he can muster and admits, “Yes. I truly do.”

**Author's Note:**

> feedback in any form is greatly appreciated! feel free to leave comments/kudos/concrit <3
> 
> hmu on:  
> twitter | FlamingAceKiri  
> discord | NekoAisu#7099


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